


There’s only one thing I want (don’t make me say it)

by DreamingOfABetterYou



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (Not for long I swear), Angst with a Happy Ending, Break Up, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Established Relationship, Getting Back Together, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, POV Steve Rogers, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Steve Rogers Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 20:00:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29514990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamingOfABetterYou/pseuds/DreamingOfABetterYou
Summary: He dreams of it, sometimes, of not holding onto Bucky on the train, and he’s terrified of making that mistake again.Deep down he knows that if Bucky should really want to leave him, he’d be helpless but to let him go.He tries not to think about it._______________Bucky leaves, learns, and returns.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 10
Kudos: 49





	1. Do you know how it ends?

**Author's Note:**

> Hello folks,
> 
> right, this will be painful for a bit but they'll be fine I SWEAR!  
> I have chapter two already written, chapter three will follow soon, so I'm hoping to be updating this every few days.  
> Title (fic and chapter) taken from Richard Siken's masterpiece poem Wishbone; it hurts so good.
> 
> Take care and have some water!  
> Liz xx

Just because the trigger words are gone doesn’t mean Bucky Barnes’ life is suddenly all sunshine and rainbows. Starting with the fact that most days, he’s still not wholly convinced he even is that foreign-to-himself man, or any man at all.

Steve knows it, can read it on his face even – or especially – when Bucky makes sure to portray as blank a canvas as possible. It breaks Steve’s heart over and over, to be ripped out of sleep by Bucky’s screams, or to wake up in the middle of the night to find the other side of the bed empty. Rationally, he knows he’ll find Bucky sitting in the hall with his back against the bathroom door or crouched on the kitchen counter, huddling around a cup of badly-brewed tea. There’s still, however, the fear that one night Steve will go looking for Bucky, stumbling through their flat with bleary eyes and cold feet, and Bucky will be gone. Just…whisked away like smoke.

He dreams of it, sometimes, of not holding onto Bucky on the train, and he’s terrified of making that mistake again.

Deep down he knows that if Bucky should really _want_ to leave him, he’d be helpless but to let him go.

He tries not to think about it.

The way that Bucky’s behaviour has been in the last few weeks forces him to think about it a lot.

Their relationship isn’t the same as it used to be, obviously, both of them having to deal with the time apart and the things that have shaped them during, both of them still reeling sometimes in the way their present seems so terribly foreign.

A few weeks ago, Steve could come home, hands shaking, and find solace in the warm curve of Bucky’s neck, in the way the other man would let Steve settle against him at night, tenderly running his fingers up and down the length of his spine.

Now, Bucky’s eyes shy away from him, and when Steve wakes up in the middle of the night, the other side of the bed is not only empty but usually cold too. He finds Bucky, staring into the darkness by the window, or asleep on the sofa, and tries not to feel heartbroken when Bucky is next to him by the time Steve awakes in the morning. Bucky pretends he was there the entire night, and Steve doesn’t have the heart to call him out on it. With everything that has happened to him – to both of them – he will take anything he can.

This, though, this silence…He can’t take it.

He was alright with it when Bucky said he didn’t trust himself to have sex, not yet, not quite yet, and he has dealt with the fact that they haven’t even _kissed_ yet, not since the war. He would love to kiss Bucky, the way he used to, the way he could just spend hours and hours necking with him in the shelter of their shared flat, and their shared tent later. The idea of being able to kiss Bucky on the streets without being arrested thrills Steve more than anything else. But if Bucky decides he can’t kiss Steve, can’t kiss anyone, then that’s alright too, and he will make his peace with it. Just as long as Bucky _talks_ to him.

“Sweetheart” he says gently over breakfast one morning, having watched Bucky push around the food on his plate for fifteen minutes. “What’s on your mind?”

Bucky’s eyes flick up to meet his, and while they’re not cold, particularly, Steve nearly shudders at the way they portray no emotion whatsoever.

“I…don’t love you“ Bucky intones quietly, flesh fingers flexing on the table where they still hold on to the fork. He might as well have screamed it, the way that they rip a hole right underneath Steve’s feet. He feels his heart plummet, and has to swallow around the sudden tightness in his throat before he can speak again.

„What?“ he breathes.

Bucky shrugs one shoulder in a terrifyingly casual movement, but Steve can see there is tension ticking in his jaw. “Maybe I used to, in the past, but that’s not me anymore.”

If he weren’t afraid of Bucky vanishing right before his eyes, Steve would bury his head in his hands, if only to escape Bucky’s dispassionate gaze for a moment. It’s been difficult for Bucky, realigning the man he is now to the man that people tell him he used to be, and Steve knows that. They have had conversations about Brooklyn, about them, about everything that happened before the train and the serum, but they rarely end well, with Bucky impatient and doubtful about the rate of his memories returning. _What if I will never remember us?_ he asks in those moments, and Steve tries to sound as convincing as possible when he replies _Then I will love you with what you remember now_.

He knows his love weighs heavily on Bucky sometimes, that it makes him feel pressured in ways Steve wouldn’t possibly wish on him, but he can’t not tell him, not after all this time thinking he had lost him.

Steve wipes a suddenly-wet cheek with his sleeve. „Bucky, you’re getting better every day, maybe…”

The other man doesn’t let him finish, and his voice is suddenly just that bit louder, just that bit sterner and more unforgiving. „I don’t want you around me. I don’t.”

The words hit Steve like a fist in the stomach.

“Buck” he pleads, hands clenching around each other so as not to be tempted to reach out to the other man. “Bucky, please. Tell me what I did, tell me what I can do to fix this.”

Bucky shakes his head lightly, his mouth a tight line that is horridly unfamiliar. „I’ll find somewhere else to stay. I’m sorry, Steve. I can’t be with you.” The chair drags loudly along the wooden floors when he pushes himself into a stand, and Steve can’t but rise along with Bucky. They sat kitty-corner like they always do, so there’s barely two feet between them, but the way that Bucky’s face is devoid of all emotion makes the distance seemingly impossible to bridge.

“Don’t leave me” Steve whispers; the _not again_ , though unsaid, echoes loudly through the still air.

Bucky backs away carefully, as if he’s afraid to turn his back on Steve, and it’s so reminiscent of their early days of reconciliation that it roots Steve in place for a few precious seconds, seconds he will deeply regret after today.

“I’ll only be a minute” he says tonelessly, tipping his head towards their bedroom.

“Bucky!” Steve exclaims just as the other man starts to turn, helpless to do anything but rush forward.

Bucky’s hands fly up immediately, a defensive posture which turns Steve into stone immediately.

“Don’t, Steve” he sighs, and suddenly looks impossibly tired.

Steve doesn’t even sit back down once Bucky disappears into the other room, still shocked into utter helplessness by the echo of Bucky’s words in his head. _I don’t love you…I don’t want you around me…I can’t be with you…I don’t love you…I don’t love you_.

When Bucky steps back into the living room with a large duffel bag after ten seconds or ten hours or ten weeks – Steve wouldn’t know – he startles slightly at Steve’s presence. His shoulders soften for only a moment before he seems to shake himself into the present once again, eyes fixed firmly on the floor as he walks past Steve to the front door and out of their shared life.

It is only when the door has clicked back into the lock near-silently that Steve becomes aware of his surroundings again. When he takes a breath, it comes out as a sob that physically hurts his chest with its intensity, and he reaches his hand up to rub circles on his chest. Then he remembers that Bucky used to do that when his asthma got bad, or when he had panic attacks, and he drops the touch as if burned.

Bucky doesn’t return.

Numbly, he collects the dishes from breakfast and near-carelessly drops them in the sink, leftover food and all. A glass splinters apart in his suddenly too-hard grip, and he stares at the pooling blood in his palm from where the glass cut him until the slash heals over.

He waits.

Bucky doesn’t return.

Steve avoids the bedroom for as long as he can, and shortly considers sleeping on the couch, before he dares to enter the room around one a.m. Contrary to what he expected, the room isn’t a mess of strewn-about clothing and ripped-open drawers; it looks exactly the same. Almost, at least. The closet door isn’t completely closed, and when Steve opens it widely the missing duffle bag is glaringly obvious from where it used to be shoved into the bottom corner.

This was no spontaneous decision, Steve realises. Bucky planned this. Bucky had a getaway bag. Bucky has been feeling this way for a while, and Steve hasn’t noticed, and now he’s gone.

 _I don’t love you_.

Steve hadn’t even noticed, and the guilt of this ignorance curls tightly in his stomach.

Bucky doesn’t return.


	2. Do you feel lucky?

Natasha has only been sleeping for two hours – peacefully, for a change – when the pounding on the door immediately puts her on high alert. Usually, bad guys don’t knock before trying to kill her, but she has met some stupid men in her life and she wouldn’t put it past them.

When she opens the door, taking care to look sleepy while cradling the Glock against the curve of her hip, hidden by the door, she nearly groans out loud before deciding it’d be too undignified. She does scowl, though, just a bit.

„James“ she acknowledges as she beckons him in with an impatient head nod.

„Natalia“ he answers drily as he lugs a massive duffle bag through her doorway. He looks absolutely horrendous; clean – or clean-ish, at least – but like he hasn’t slept in about two weeks. Similarly to Steve, actually; she just saw him last night, at a debriefing that took entirely too long, and he was looking at the papers in front of him with an expression so deeply desperate and lonely she doesn’t particularly want to recall it. Natasha doesn’t believe in coincidences.

“What have you done?“ she asks simply, rolling her eyes when James dumps himself on her sofa uninvited. It’s probably her own fault for keeping her apartment so damn nice; it makes all kinds of idiots – usually Clint, or, more rarely, James – flock to her.

James is silent for a while, staring down the carpet between his knees. His words look like they hurt him when he finally speaks. “The right thing.”

Natasha doesn’t snort derisively, but it’s a close call. “Is that so?” she asks as she sits down next to him, just enough space between them not to freak him out if he’s in a truly bad place. “You’re miserable. And so is Steve.” James flinches at the name, just as she expected, and she can almost _feel_ the yearning coming off him in waves. She watches him choke one of her throw pillows in his hands for a few moments, knowing that there are questions hiding behind his teeth, questions he knows he wouldn’t like the answer to.

“He’ll be fine” he forces out between clenched teeth, voice tensed up like a tightrope.

“But not you?” she retorts easily, corner of her mouth ticking up when it makes him laugh. Bitterly, but still.

“I haven’t been anything close to fine in a while. Most days, I’m barely even a person” he mutters, flexing the metal fingers of his left hand.

She hums. „And you think Steve deserves better than you.”

James’ eyes fly up to her, almost betrayed-looking by the ease with which she pried this secret dark thought out of his heart without even really trying.

„What…“

She shrugs. „Familiar thoughts, believe me.” His eyes soften, then grow distant for a moment, as they both recall a red-panelled room, long-stretching corridors and cold nights. She pushes her knee against his thigh gently to bring him back, and smiles when he pushes back for a moment. “But let me tell you, they’re nonsense. He loves you.”

James shakes his head, running his fingers through his unruly hair for a moment before he tips his head sideways to look at her.

“He shouldn’t” he murmurs, pleads, begs, like she has the power to change it, like she can free Steve from his attachment to James.

She shakes her head lightly. “That’s not a choice you can make for him.”

He chuckles ruefully. “I know. He’s so fucking stubborn.” His voice catches on the unshed tears lurking in his eyes, and his next breath is a sob. He cries for a while, not even bothering to hide his face, not in front of her. When Natasha reaches out to grip his hand, the metal fingers curl tightly around hers.

They sit like that for a while.


	3. Do you want to go home now?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end, my darlings! Thank you for coming on this short trip with me, and thank you for your kind words!
> 
> Love, Liz xx

Bucky returns.

One moment, Steve is sitting on the couch, leafing unseeingly through a book on brutalist architecture, and the next moment, Bucky is standing in the middle of the room, eyes fixed on Steve like he will disappear if he so much as blinks.

“Hey, Steve” he croaks, forcedly casual, and it takes every ounce of strength for Steve not to fling himself at him in desperate need for contact; he can’t help himself from shooting up from his seat, though, the book slipping from his suddenly-slack hands and hitting the rug with a low thud.

“Hey, Buck” he replies quietly, carefully holding himself still to not spook Bucky, greedily looking over the other man’s face. He looks thinner, his cheeks near-haggard, and his eyes shimmer suspiciously. He’s carrying the duffle bag that he took with him when he left; the memory is still painful, but Steve doesn’t allow himself to hope that this means that Bucky is coming home.

Bucky shuffles in place uncomfortably at the thick silence between them before he speaks quietly.

“I was at Natalia’s.”

“Nat’s?” Steve gapes. He doesn’t mean to sound as shocked as he is, and it’s not that he is suspicious something might have happened between them. (Natasha would rightfully slap him, if nothing else, should he ever voice a thought like that.) But he has always felt bittersweetly about their relationship; while he is so very glad that they had each other to hold onto in that wretched place, at least for a while, it is also a glaring reminder of all the time he has missed with Bucky. A reminder of things that can’t be undone, can’t be explained or understood.

Steve has always been terrified of those things becoming too large to possibly bridge, and Bucky leaving fulfilled his worst nightmares.

He knows Bucky is very insecure about the bond Steve has with Natasha, too; it makes any interaction between the three of them slightly strained, and it’s not fair to any of them, least of all Natasha, but it’s the way it is. For now at least.

Bucky swallows tightly, shifting to his other foot. “I was at a hotel, the first two weeks, staring at the ceiling and thinking of what I’d done to you. Then I…I couldn’t be here, not yet, so I went to her. She knocked some sense into me.” The corner of his mouth twitches unhappily, like he has physically forgotten how to smile. It breaks Steve’s heart like nothing else.

“Bucky…” he starts off carefully, but the other man shakes his head, finally breaking their tenderly desperate eye contact as he drops his gaze to the floor.

“I’m sorry for how I left" he confesses miserably, head bowed as if in prayer, or in expectation of punishment. "So sorry.” _How I left_ , Steve brain unnecessarily supplies. _Not_ that _I left_.

“Will you stay?” he asks, barely recognising his own voice in its timidness.

Bucky sighs quietly before looking up again; Steve can hear the strain of the duffle bag's fabric in his grip.

“You don’t want this, Steve.”

Steve shakes his head violently. “I want _you_ ” he insists. “I love you. That hasn’t changed.”

Bucky drops the bag with a heavy thud, storming forward a couple of steps as if expecting – hoping maybe? – that Steve will back away in fear. He doesn’t.

“But I have!” he exclaims wildly, eyes wide and solemn like he’s making a valid point. “I nearly killed you, did you forget that? I wanted to kill you” he breaks off quietly, ducking his head in shame.

“You didn’t, though” Steve reminds him. They have been having this exact conversation many times over the last year, and it rattles Steve’s bones every time, but he takes care to let none of his frustrations bleed into his voice. “You pulled me out of the river.”

“Steve” Bucky starts, but falls silent when Steve takes a determined step towards him. They’re close enough now that Steve could touch him if he wants, and oh, he _wants_. But not yet.

“Don’t decide this for both of us, if there’s something in you that wants to stay with me” he says softly, but determinedly, keeping their eyes locked. “I love you, Bucky. I want you by my side, always.” The words make the other man shake his head sadly, dropping his gaze, and Steve wants to curl around him, shield him from everything else, and push the words into his skin, letter by letter, until he starts to believe them.

Bucky’s eyes are resigned when they meet his again. “You wouldn’t fall in love with me if you met me today, the way I am.” The metal fingers at his side whirr quietly as they clench, and Steve is not quite sure whether it’s a subconscious reaction or a way to drive his point home.

“You’re only here because you’re in love with a dead man” Bucky spits bitterly, making Steve blink back sudden tears. This dissociation that Bucky experiences sometimes, the way he completely splits who he used to be from who he is now, breaks Steve’s heart anew every time he notices it. Not because he doesn’t love the way Bucky is today, but because he can feel the strain Bucky is putting on himself by violently ripping his personality, his memories and his habits into two separate identities, thinking he is not allowed to be unsure about any of it.

Steve’s voice shakes as he pushes the words out, nails biting into the skin of his palms as he unconsciously clenches his fists. “I will love you whatever happens, in every way I can.”

“Why?” Bucky asks desperately, and he still doesn’t _get it_ , not after all this time.

“Because you’re a good man, and because I belong to you” Steve says simply, only it’s not simple, is it? “All of me. I don’t want to lose you again, not if I can help it. The way you are now is more than enough.”

Bucky visibly works through those words for a moment, and Steve can tell by the way his jaw clenches when he runs into another blockage. “But you will always love _him_ more” he whispers, voice breaking.

As much as they have talked and fought about Bucky’s identity – or, Bucky would sometimes say, lack thereof – this is not a concern he has voiced before. Steve can see by the way Bucky won’t let their eyes meet anymore that this is what Bucky really fears: To be a stand-in for a man he cannot possibly measure up to be. To disappoint Steve with his shortcomings of acting the part, and to end up alone when Steve finally leaves him, disgusted by his failure.

The thought takes a moment to work through in its entirety; at the other side of it, Steve’s cheeks are wet with tears.

“I won’t forget the way you were. I can’t” he croaks through a closed throat, the noise making Bucky’s gaze fly up to meet his. His face twists awfully when he sees Steve crying, shoulders hunching in misery. “You are almost as much a part of me as I am. But the way you are now is a part of me, too, and I love you so, so much, just like this.”

Bucky sniffs, squaring his jaw to keep his lips from trembling – Steve has been familiar with that particular movement since 1930 when Bucky had skinned his knee on the street and was desperate not to show how close he was to crying – and steps even closer to Steve. His fingertips are careful but thorough as he wipes Steve’s tears away.

“You’re a stubborn punk” he mutters menacingly even as his palms cradle Steve’s face with such care that it almost brings new tears to the surface.

Steve laughs wetly, placing his hand on top of Bucky’s metal one and leaning further into the touch. “Gotta be, with the way you are.”

They stand like this for a while, just drinking each other in recklessly, the silence only broken by some far-and-in-between cars speeding down the road. Bucky swallows heavily before he talks again, dropping his hands but letting Steve tangle their fingers together.

“I remember squabbling over some…ride or other?” he starts slowly, metal fingers twitching in Steve’s gentle hold. “You were nauseous the whole way back, but insisted we’d go again the week after.”

Steve smiles warmly. “That was the weekend you dragged me on the Cyclone. Coney Island, do you remember that?”

“Rings a bell” Bucky frowns, but his eyes spark with the beginning of a memory, if not of that day in particular then of the general area during that time.

“Why didn’t you tell me you remembered?” Steve asks carefully, almost wanting to stuff the words back into his mouth as soon as they come out.

Bucky frowns again, mouth tightening into a regretful shape. “Because I didn’t want to disappoint you in case I don’t remember the important parts.” He meets Steve’s eyes dead-on, but his voice wavers when he speaks. “Maybe I won’t, ever.”

Steve doesn’t tell him he will, doesn’t tell him it’s alright if he doesn’t, because that’s not what this is about.

“We can make new memories, Buck” he assures him with a hint of a smile, gently squeezing his hand.

“Like what?” Bucky asks lowly, and _oh_ , that is a tone of voice Steve hasn’t heard in a very long time, a tone that curls in the bottom of his stomach contently and warm like a purring cat. Still, he is too careful to just rush into things headfirst, too aware of what he has to lose.

“First kiss in the 21st century, maybe” he mutters into the shrinking space between them, and his smile widens at the way Bucky’s pupils blow slightly at that suggestion.

“You want that?” Bucky asks, even as he playfully nudges their noses together. They’re breathing the same air now, and it should be terrible after the dinner Steve has had, but the way he smells is about the furthest thing from his mind with Bucky so close.

“I do. But only if you do, too.”

Bucky makes a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat, bumping the tip of his nose against Steve’s cheek for a moment as he speaks almost shyly. “I always wanted you. I was just scared you’d want me for…not-me.”

Steve nods slowly, humming low in his throat as he carefully curls an arm around Bucky’s waist. “If you ever feel that way again, please…please talk to me. Don’t leave me. Talk” his voice breaks on the last words, and the grip he still has on Bucky’s hand tightens unbiddenly.

“I will. I promise” Bucky whispers against Steve’s mouth, so close their lips almost brush with every move. Before their lips can meet, however, Bucky puts a hand on Steve’s chest, pushing away a few inches.

“Wait.”

Steve’s instinct is to let go completely and possibly fling himself out of the window because it seems like he somehow managed to hurt Bucky _yet again_ , but apparently the thought is projected on his face in such an obvious manner that Bucky chuckles tenderly.

“No, sweetheart, no” he says quickly, fingers caressing Steve’s chest soothingly. “I just…I told you I don’t love you.”

Steve’s stomach drops instantly, and Bucky must see something on his face because he hurries to go on.

“And…it’s not true. It’s not true, and I wanted to take it back the moment I said it, but I thought you’d be alright more quickly if you thought I didn’t feel the same. I love you, though” he vows, brows furrowing in visible distress. “I’m sorry for saying I didn’t. I’m so sorry. I love you so much.”

Every piece that Steve is made of shatters apart at the same time and grows into an inconceivable lightness he can’t really understand. He can only gasp “God, I love you too” before Bucky’s mouth is on his – finally, _finally_ – and the storm in him settles, and the only thing important in the universe is to wrap his arms around Bucky and pull him closer still.

He feels warm in Steve’s embrace, slightly too thin due to the misery they have both lived through those last weeks, but that is no matter for now. Bucky kisses him desperately, like he did after Azzano, but there is something else there too that Steve doesn’t yet recognise as familiar. When the kiss softens, lightens, turns into half-sobbing, half-laughing pecks along cheeks and jaws and foreheads, Steve settles further into Bucky’s touch, pleasure shuddering through him as metal fingertips draw up the length of his spine under his shirt. He is happy, Steve realises, as he buries one gentle hand in Bucky’s hair, tipping his head back to claim his mouth again more easily.

They will have to talk about things, unpleasant things, like whether Bucky will even want to be called by the name of a man he doesn’t always feel like he is. But for now, Steve thinks, he is more than happy to hold Bucky close and kiss him for a long, long time.


End file.
